An Overview of Google Search Ads

You’ve probably heard of the world’s most popular search engine, Google. As a business owner, I can take time to go into all kinds of statistics and data as to how they’re absolutely dominating the search engine category, and how they’re greater than 90% of the market share in most search engine categories and in most countries. But instead, I want to focus more on Google Ads, the ad side of Google search. In order to monetize their search platform, Google sells ads to businesses, individuals, nonprofits, anybody that’s wanting to buy advertising space on Google (except of course for a few industries that are not good for advertising).

The prerequisite to buying ads on Google is to have a Google Ads account. We’ll cover how to actually set this up in a separate post/video. Today, we will present an overview.

Advertising looks very different nowadays. It’s not the quarter page ad in the Yellow Pages anymore… Rather, the advertiser is paying for search terms, in order to match their terms with a client’s search. When the two match, the advertiser appears in the client’s search results.

Picture this scenario: Someone on the world wide web is doing a Google search for digital marketing services. We at WunderTRE happen to provide digital marketing services, and want to show up at the top of this person’s search results. We can invest a lot of time and money developing and tweaking search engine optimization (SEO), or we can buy an ad that will put us at the top of that person’s Google search result.

When you run a Google search, your first three results will typically be ads, depending on the search term. Sometimes the results at the bottom of the search page are ads also. Ads are denoted by this icon:

Facebook

Twitter

Google+

Gmail

Yahoo Mail

LinkedIn

to differentiate it from an organic listing. It is very subtle yet still labeled so the end user knows that they are in fact clicking an ad.

Google Search Ads are a great way to place yourself as the number in one of the top 3 results. Your options are limitless if you use multiple keywords to target multiple searches. In addition, location can be targeted, such as by specific zip codes, cities, states, and countries. An advertiser will buy keywords, target them to a location, and then add a text-based ad. Your ad will show up when people search your keywords or terms.

Facebook

Twitter

Google+

Gmail

Yahoo Mail

LinkedIn

Google Ads also offers something a little more along the lines of those Yellow Page ads: display ads. These are image-based and appear in Google partner network sites. You’ve seen them as you scroll through a website, and see a collection of ads along the right-hand side, for example. That’s the Google Display Network Ad system at work. We’ll do an overview for Display Ads in a separate post.

In short, Google Search Ads work for you based on your choice of keywords. Text-based ads usually have a headline with a brief description and a call to action which encouraged readers to either call or visit your website.

Google Ads offers two platforms, AdWords Express, and the regular Google AdWords. AdWords Express is great if you need to throw some quick ads together. AdWords Express is great for the average business owner, and even for an agency to write ads on behalf of the business owner, Google AdWords Express will get the job done. However, consider using the traditional Google AdWords platform if you need depth and specifics in your keywords, if you need a lot of granularity, or you are currently running multiple campaigns at one time.

Facebook

Twitter

Google+

Gmail

Yahoo Mail

LinkedIn

Google Search Ads are “Pay Per Click” ads because you pay every time somebody clicks on your ad (not every time someone sees your ad). You set a monthly limit, and then you pay each time someone clicks through.

There’s your typical workflow, and it can be a really quick process. I hope this post has been informative. Be watching our blog for upcoming in-depth posts that will dig deeper into the different elements of establishing Google Ads.